There must be several hundred books on sexual abuse of children and claims of recovered
memories by adults of their having abused as children. Keep in mind that the reality of
sexual abuse and the reality of one's memories of the same may be different. There is no
doubt that there is sexual abuse of children and some reasonable debate
about how trustworthy children's reports of such abuse are. However, the
most controversial issue is whether one
should trust recovered memories of such abuse. The debate on this issue has become fierce
with many therapists (but probably not a majority of clinical psychologists) favoring the
existence of repressed memories and almost all memory experts being quite skeptical of the
existence of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, let alone the validity of
recovered memories. An additional controversial issue is whether there are cases of ritual
Satanic abuse.

Bass, Ellen and Davis, Laura.The
Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse(3rd
edition). (*) A large and hugely influential book that has become the bible of the
recovered memories movement. This latest edition features an unconvincing rebuttal to the
many critics of this movement.

Crews, Frederick. The Memory
Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (*). New York Review Books. 1995. Basically
consists of two lengthy and famous articles on Freud and the recovered memory controversy
written originally for the New York Review. Crews argues that Freud was wrong in general and particulars
because he was not a good or even honorable scientist and that the recovered memory
movement is thereby built on a shaky foundation. Includes also letters to the editor
mostly highly critical of Crews and supportive of Freud, psychoanalysis, and recovered
memories. For a more extended and even harsher critique of Freud and believers in
psychoanalysis, see Malcolm Macmillan'sFreud
Evaluated: The Completed Arc (North-Holland, 1991)

Franklin, Eileen, & Wright, W. Sins
of the Father. Crown, 1991. The notorious case of Ms. Franklin who recovered a
repressed memory that her father killed her childhood friend over twenty years before. Her
testimony was the only evidence used to convict her father. For suggestions that the
memory probably was fabricated see Loftus, and Ofshe & Watters below and MacLean, Harry, Once Upon a Time
(HarperCollins, 1993).

Fredrickson, Renee. Repressed
Memories. (*) Fireside, 1992. An impassioned plea for the existence of
repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse and guidelines for how to deal with them.

Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and
Recovery. (*) Basic Books, 1992. A Harvard psychiatrist who strongly supports
the notion that many patients have repressed memories of sexual abuse. She
explicitly makes
this a feminist issue.

Loftus, Elizabeth & Ketcham, Katherine.The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual
Abuse. St Martin's Press, 1994. Loftus is justly famous for her path-breaking
research showing that memories can be induced and altered by subsequent
events, and this book is critical of the whole idea
of repressed memories of sexual abuse although Loftus does not rule out the possibility of
repression and recovered memories. There are descriptions of interesting case studies.

Noblitt, James R., & Perskin, Pamela Sue. Cult and Ritual Abuse: Its History, Anthropology, and Recent Discovery in
Contemporary America. Praeger, 1995. Highly sympathetic to the idea that there is a
network of Satanic ritual abusers -- written by a therapist who has treated alleged
victims of such abuse.

Ofshe, Richard & Watters, Ethan.Making
Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria. Charles
Scribner's, 1994. A deeply troubling (and angry) book that attacks the whole notion of
repressed memories and psychotherapists for encouraging such reports. Ofshe is a leading
expert on cults and has won a Pulitzer Prize for a previous book on Synanon. He was also
the person who showed that Paul Ingram's memories of having abused his own daughters were
probably false (See Remembering Satan below).

Pendergrast, Mark.Victims of
Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives. (*) Upper Access, 1995. A
comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon and its psychological and cultural context by a
writer who himself has been accused of abusing his daughters. While quite lengthy, it is
well written, and is generally still the best treatment of the topic.

Pezdek, Kathy, & Banks, William.The Recovered Memory/False Memory Debate. Academic Press, 1996. A collection
of articles by psychologists, some technical, which support both sides of the debate to
varying degrees.

Pope, Harrison. Psychology
Astray: Fallacies in Studies of "Repressed Memory" and Childhood Trauma
(*) Upton Books, 1997. A psychiatrist discusses the logic of research designed to
"prove" the reality of recovered memory cases. Since the tone is dispassionate
and the writing style quite lucid, this is a good place to begin for criticisms of the
recovered memory movement.

Wright, Lawrence. Remembering
Satan. Knopf, 1994. Originally a two-part New Yorker series, this is a
fascinating discussion of the Ingram family and how assertions of childhood abuse by his
daughters convinced even the accused, Paul Ingram, that he had abused them. This is a
page-turner.

Yapko, Michael. Suggestions of
Abuse: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual Trauma. Simon &
Schuster, 1994. A sensitive and balanced critique of the whole controversy. The author
does not reject the idea that abuse can be repressed or that such memories can be
recovered during therapy, but he is highly critical of therapists who actively push the
idea of repressed sexual abuse memories and who uncritically use hypnosis to gain access
to them.